


Take Your Daughter to Work Day

by panchostokes (badwolfrun)



Series: Ficverse: Parker and Madison Stokes [2]
Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Kid Fic, Madison is his daughter, but no actual angst, minor hurt/comfort, nick is a dad, special appearance by Sofia Curtis, who deserved better so i'm giving it to her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-06 02:23:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18841696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badwolfrun/pseuds/panchostokes
Summary: It's take your daughter to work day at the San Diego Crime Lab, and Madison wanders off for just the slightest of moments...





	Take Your Daughter to Work Day

**Author's Note:**

> As with my last Nick + kids fic, I don't reference the other parent, so that's left to your imagination!

“Paperwork is  _ so boring _ !” Madison whines. She plants her face down onto Nick’s desk, sprawling her arms out dramatically. Her fingers brush the edges of her father’s papers, an effort she makes, to get his attention.

Nick stares at his daughter over the frames of his glasses, which had fallen to the edge of his nose. He wishes he could take a picture of his adorable, impatient daughter in this silly manner. But like all children Madison’s age, they can’t seem to sit still long enough for Nick to pull out his camera and snap a picture.

“I know, sweetie, I know,” he tells her, and resumes his review of the paperwork from the night shift. “What happened to your coloring book?”

“I finished all the paaaages,” Madison heaves in a dramatic sigh and starts to look around the room. She spots a card on one side of his desk, a birthday card. She remembers seeing him open a card just like that one, a few weeks ago on his birthday.

“To Pancho, Love Cisco…” she reads out loud. “Daddy, who’s Pancho?”

“That’s me.”

“And who’s Cisco?”

“That’s Grandpa.”

“Why did Gran’pa use those names?”

“Their our nicknames. You know, names you give to somebody you really like, or names that your friends call you.”

“Oh.”

She looks at the pictures of people she knows, and a few that she doesn’t. Her dad sure has a lot of friends...friends that even drew him pictures…

“Who’s ‘Cassie?’” Madison asks, picking up a card on Nick’s desk drawn in crayon.

Nick lifts his head up fully, to stare at the card alongside his daughter. His mouth gapes open, his tongue pokes out, spreading over his lips before he closes them and swallows nervously.

“She...Well, she was--”

The phone rings, startling Nick to an extent that his glasses fall off of his nose. Madison giggles, and Nick tries (and fails) to suppress a giggle himself. Madison’s giggles are contagious.

“Stokes...Really?” 

Madison continues to stare at the card while her dad talks on the phone. She studies the front--a picture of a house, with a “bad guy” at the front door, a little girl hidden in bushes, people drawn with Xs for eyes at the bottom of the card. The words read, “Thanks for finding me,”

“Yeah, I-I’ll be right there.” 

He hangs up the phone and stands up, a huge smile on his face. He spreads out his arms, as if about to make an exciting announcement. Madison sits up straight in her seat, her ears pricking up. 

“It’s your lucky day, Madison Stokes, we’re free from the paperwork!” 

“Hooray!” Madison exclaims, lifting her arms up. Nick scoops her up and twirls her around, making her giggle again. He sets her down and holds the door open for her. 

Nick looks back at the large stack on his desk as he leads her out of his office. 

“For now,” he laments sadly, placing his hand gently on the back of Madison’s head, to lead her through the halls of the Crime Lab.

“Where we going now, Daddy?” Madison asks, her eyes wide as she takes quick glances into the individual lab rooms.

“We’re going to go see a good friend of mine, she just caught a  _ very  _ bad guy.”

“Ooh! What did he do?”

“I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

“You always say that!”

“Because you’re not older yet.”

“That’s not true--I am older by fifteen minutes since you last told me that!”

Nick laughs as they cross through an overpass. Madison’s attention is taken away from their pseudo-argument and directed towards the view of the city. She stops, falling behind for a moment.

“Whoa…”

“C’mon, Mads, we’ll come back later,” Nick tells her, holding the door open as she jogs to catch up to him. 

“Undersheriff Curtis!” Nick calls out, holding Madison’s hand as they walk through the halls of the San Diego Police Department. To Madison, the department is like a maze--there are so many doors, so many hallways, bullpens, more people than the crime lab. 

Sofia Curtis turns around, a smile spreads across her face. 

“Transferred here, what, a month ago and you’re already beating the record?” Nick greets her, shaking her hand. 

“Well, looks like you’ve got quite the record yourself, Lab Director Stokes. It’s great to see you again, Nick,”

“Likewise. Oh, this is my daughter, Madison.”

Nick lifts Madison up by her arm, lifting her a few inches off of the ground, which makes the both of them giggle. 

Sofia crouches down, to get eye-level with Madison, and they share a smile.

“Nice to meet you, Madison Stokes. My name is Sofia,”

“Hi, Sofia!”

“You know, I always pegged you as the family-man, but never the suit and tie type of guy,” Sofia teases Nick, who adjusts his tie anxiously.

“Yeah, well, the tie’s only for show. So...how’d it go down?” Nick asks in a hushed voice.

Madison begins to look around the station as Sofia recounts a story to Nick. She isn’t paying attention, the details sound boring--she knows that Sofia is censoring certain things, spelling out words that Madison can spell out in her head anyway--but her father seems completely enthralled. 

She spots a snack machine, and her stomach rumbles.

“Daddyyyyy I want a snack!” Madison interrupts. 

“Here, sweetie, get whatever you want--and  _ then come right back _ ,” Nick keeps hold of the crumpled bill, tugging it with every emphasized word. 

“I promise,” Madison nods, and Nick smiles at her, letting go of his grip on the money. She stumbles backwards, and then runs to the vending machine.

“She’s adorable,” Sofia remarks as they keep an eye on Madison. “Anyway, so we pull up to the warehouse…”

Madison hums as she stares up at the tall machine, deciding on a candy bar that she intends on splitting with her dad. She fumbles around the change dispenser, a fluke in the machine causes more change than expected to fall out. She giggles as she tries to catch all of the coins--it reminds her of the slot machine that Nick showed her once, during a trip to Vegas.

The coins scatter all over the floor, one of them rolls off into the hallway and Madison chases after it, but it keeps rolling...and rolling...and rolling until she finally catches up to it underneath a water fountain.

She smiles triumphantly, and turns to go back to the rest of her change, but finds that she got turned around...the snack machine is nowhere in sight. 

“D-Daddy?” she begins to mutter, her bottom lip begins to quiver. She starts to weave in and out through the tall policemen, none of whom look like her father. She keeps her eyes and ears peeled, looking for any sign of him, or the snack machine, but it’s not looking good. The crowd begins to thin out, and soon, she’s running down an empty hallway.

She’s lost.

“Daddy!” she cries, as she slumps against a wall. She starts to hear voices--many voices, one of which sounds like her dad...

“Hey, kid...what’s wrong?” a man, who is definitely not her father, asks.

“I can-can’t fuh-find muh-my Daddyyyyy!” Madison sobs.

“Well, that’s okay, I can help you find your daddy,” the man tells her. 

“Y-yeah?” 

“Yeah, come with me,” the man grabs her hand, pulls her off the floor, begin to walk together. “Your dad is a good friend of mine,”

Madison looks up at the man as they walk towards the end of the hall, towards a door with large red letters, “EXIT.” She notices that the man is not dressed in a uniform, but still has a gun behind his jacket. 

“Y-You said you were a good friend of my daddy’s?” Madison asks him, trying to loosen their entangled hands. They’re almost at the exit, right by the door. 

“Yes, sweetheart.”

“Then what’s his nickname?”

The man pauses, long enough for Madison to realize that this man is  _ not  _ a friend of her Dad’s. She drops the card that she was still holding, exclaims so loud, almost in a scream--

“Oh no, my card!” 

Instead of reaching for the card, she quickly spins out of the man’s grip, and kicks him between his legs. She grabs the card and runs back the way they came, screaming out for help--

“MADISON!” Her father screams back. “I’M COMING!” 

She nearly collides into her father, who looks almost unrecognizable in his anger. His face is red, his thick eyebrows narrowed. His nostrils are wide, his breathing heavy. He gives Madison a look, a quick angry look that she knows isn’t directed  _ at  _ her, but still makes her bottom lip quiver in fear. He gently pushes her into Sofia and pounces on the man, who tries to get away. 

Sofia scoops Madison up in her arms, swings her away from the scene, but Madison still gets a glimpse at her father, holding the man against the wall with one hand, his other on his belt holster. She can’t hear what they’re saying, but her father is talking hushed, fast, fierce. 

“HUH? WHAT DID YOU SAY ABOUT MY DAUGHTER?” Nick suddenly shouts at the man, tightening his grip, shaking him against the wall. 

“I-I’M SORRY!” The man cries out. 

“No...no you’re not. Not yet. Get him the f--”

Sofia cups her hands over Madison’s ears, but she knows...that’s a dollar or two for the swear jar.

A few policemen grab the man roughly, the man’s previous “broken” charade fades quick into threats of lawsuits, but it doesn’t deter Nick from walking towards this daughter, his face softening as he adjusts his tie.

“Are you okay?” he asks in a low voice, cupping her cheek in his hand. She sniffles and nods, worries that if she speaks, she would start crying again. Her face crumples as his previously fiery eyes become cloudy, his eyebrows curve upward in concern, his breathing is shaky, his face begins to pale. She feels a sob shake her to her core, and reaches to him.

“C’mere, Mads,” he whispers, gently lifting her from Sofia’s arms. “It’s all right, I got you. I got you.”

She buries her face into his shoulder, heaving and shaking. 

“More scared than she lets on,” Nick mouths to Sofia, laying his head against hers. 

“Just like her dad,” Sofia remarks, before walking away.

They stand in the hallway, Nick allows her all the time she needs to recover. 

“You know...that card, that you’re holding, was given to me by a very brave little girl. You were  _ so brave _ , just like she was.” 

Madison makes a sound, incoherent, and nuzzles her face into his shoulder keeper. 

“How about we go home, get some ice cream? Would you like that?”

She nods, her face still on his shoulder. He could feel the dampness from her tears. 

“Alright, let’s go. No more paperwork!” 

She tries, and fails to contain a giggle. Nick smiles, bouncing her upwards as he shifts her body weight in his arms. 

“How’d you know that was a bad man?” Nick asks as they walk back through the overpass. He stops, she lifts up her head, to stare out at the city. He brushes her hair out of her face, sees her eyes lighten up at the gorgeous view.  

“He didn’t know your nickname... _ Pancho _ .” 

Nick turns his face away, his bottom lip quivering, his eyes burning with tears. His sniffles turn into a chuckle, then into a proud laugh. 

“Well, I guess that makes you the new Cisco Kid, huh?” 


End file.
